Groups join to fight poverty

Tuesday

Jan 29, 2013 at 12:01 AM

STOCKTON - University of the Pacific and several social service organizations are joining forces to try to bring more money to nonprofit groups serving the nearly 20 percent of the population in San Joaquin County living in poverty.

Roger Phillips

STOCKTON - University of the Pacific and several social service organizations are joining forces to try to bring more money to nonprofit groups serving the nearly 20 percent of the population in San Joaquin County living in poverty.

Pacific's Beyond Our Gates Community Council, First 5 San Joaquin, Health Plan of San Joaquin and Behavioral Health Services announced Monday a plan to hire a 20-hour-a-week grant writer as a consultant who would work to boost the flow of foundation money into the county.

"There are a lot of great programs in San Joaquin County," said Jennifer Torres Siders, Beyond Our Gates' community relations manager. "What we don't have is ways to connect programs, to help agencies and organizations work together effectively. We felt a program like this would build the capacity of our nonprofits: 'We know you're doing good work; let's help you get the money.' "

San Joaquin County, with 688,000 residents, received about $876,000 in foundation grants in 2011, according to Beyond Our Gates research. San Francisco County, with a population of 805,000, received nearly $54 million. In 2011, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 18.1 percent of San Joaquin County residents were living in poverty. The San Francisco County poverty rate was 13.8 percent.

Lani Schiff-Ross, executive director of First 5 San Joaquin, said few agencies can afford to hire grant writers of their own.

"Many are really stretched," Schiff-Ross said. "If we can help our nonprofit community in addressing this issue and bring in more resources, it would be a benefit to the community."

Much of Beyond Our Gates' focus is on increasing the rate of early childhood literacy. Only 36 percent of third-graders in San Joaquin County are proficient readers. Myriad factors contribute to the lagging reading proficiency of children in the county, Torres Siders said.

"They need to be healthy; they need to have safe neighborhoods," Torres Siders said. "They're all sort of complementary areas. We're looking for grant proposals to create programs in those areas."

Torres Siders said she expects the search for a grant writer to begin shortly with the hope that someone will be hired in a matter of months. She said the Community Foundation of San Joaquin has agreed to provide work space for the grant writer at its main office in Stockton and its satellite facility in Tracy. The job will begin as a two-year pilot program.

"We're just recognizing the need in this community to bring in more funding dollars," Schiff-Ross said. "The cry going out for years is that foundations pass over us. We've seen them fund Fresno, Sacramento and the Bay Area, but they pass over us.

"We have so many great things going on here, but we're so busy doing the work, we forget to tell the story. We need to tell the story better."